a polo stick for doing his simple
duty,--lost his head outright. His first bound snapped the curb chain;
and taking the bit between his teeth he bolted across the green as if all
the fiends in hell were after him. In vain Quita sat back, and put her
whole light weight into her arms. Sheer terror had caught hold of him:
and he headed blindly for the ring of natives, who broke away right and
left, with shrill cries that gave the finishing touch to his terror.

And now no more than a stretch of shelving turf lay between him and the
unfathomed lake. Towards it he fled at an undiminished pace: and Quita,
sitting square and steady, with a rushing sound in her ears, foresaw that
in less than five minutes her mad hope might be terribly fulfilled. For
at the lake's edge the pony must needs swerve sharply, or come to a dead
halt: and in either case, at their present rate of speed, she would be
flung violently out of the saddle.

Desmond dared not follow, lest he make matters worse.

Maurice sprang up from his seat in the pavilion, and stood transfixed,
helpless. "_Nom de Dieu . . . que faire? Elle va mourir!_" he muttered
with shaking lips: and Elsie, child as she was, yearned over him with all
the tenderness and pity of inherent motherhood.

Then the tall figure of Lenox broke away from the stunned crowd racing
diagonally across the clear stretch between the pony and the lake.

The instant Quita missed her stroke he had risen to his feet; and his
intent now was to reach a given spot simultaneously with the pony, and by
the force of his added weight on the reins save the situation.

A shout of approval went up from soldiers and natives; and 'Unlimited
Loo' fled faster. He passed the point Lenox was making for a bare
hand's-length out of reach: but two strides landed him on a treacherous
strip of thinly-crusted bog that encircles the lake, and he sank up to
his knees in semi-liquid mud.

Quita, breathless and shaken, was jerked out of the saddle, and must have
fallen, ignominiously, face downward in her Slough of Despond, but that
Lenox,--reaching her in the nick of time--caught and crushed her in his
arms.

"You're not hurt. Thank God, you're not hurt," he whispered unsteadily.

With a gasp of amazement that ended in a sob, she leaned her cheek
against his coat; and the riotous music of their hearts seemed to fill
the universe.

Then reality rushed in, and shattered the dream. For Garth, Maurice, and
Bathurst